


Chocolate

by mozaikmage



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Chocolate, Confessions, F/F, Valentine's Day, Valentine's Day Fic Exchange, Valentine's Day Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-27 18:02:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17771621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mozaikmage/pseuds/mozaikmage
Summary: Hitoka and Kiyoko make chocolates for the volleyball club.





	Chocolate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jellyryans (ryankellycc)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryankellycc/gifts).



> for Colleen in the HQ Writer's server valentine's exchange! I tried to write a fic as sweet as u <3 I hope you like it!  
> [this was in my head the whole time I was writing lmao](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgdPlDG1-8k)

Valentine’s day approached like a snowball rolling down a hill, slowly and then faster and faster, until Yachi Hitoka checked the calendar one morning and realized she had exactly a week to make chocolates for her entire volleyball team.

Not  _ her _ team, exactly, but the team she managed. Shimizu-senpai and the other third years had retired after Spring High just a few weeks earlier, and Hitoka was getting used to managing everything without Shimizu-senpai’s reassuring, beautiful presence beside her. Not that she didn’t miss the third years, of course. Anyway, after practice on Monday, Hitoka gathered her courage and asked Coach Ukai for permission to make an announcement.

“Um, I’m going to make chocolates for everybody on Valentine’s day,” Hitoka said, blushing furiously, “so please let me know of any allergies or preferences I should take into account!” She bowed deeply and thrust her notebook out in front of her.

Karasuno’s men’s volleyball team stared at her in shocked silence. Hitoka, still bowing, already regretted everything. This was weird, wasn’t it? It was probably super weird. Maybe she could rewind time a bit and pretend she never said anything. That would be great. She lifted her head a little, dreading whatever the boys’ reactions would be.

“Yachi-san,” Hinata said gravely, “I would die for you.” 

“P-please don’t!” she squeaked. Kageyama glared at Hinata with mild alarm.

Tanaka looked like he was holding back tears. Even Tsukishima seemed emotionally moved, although it was always hard to tell with him. Ennoshita, smiling reassuringly at her, took the notebook from Hitoka and wrote down everyone’s allergies and favorite chocolate types and even texted the retired third years for their input. 

“What are you gonna make? Cakes? Bonbons? Cookies?” Hinata asked her after practice, jumping up and down with each question. How he still had that much energy, Hitoka wasn’t sure.

“Um, I got these little bird-shaped chocolate molds? They’re not crows but they’re close enough, and I can put fillings inside the chocolates and drizzle caramel on top or something.” Hitoka pulled her outdoor shoes on with one hand and checked her LINE messages with the other. Her heart squeezed painfully. One new message from Shimizu-senpai. 

_ Shimizu Kiyoko (*ﾉωﾉ): Ennoshita-kun said you’re planning on making chocolates for everyone? Good for you! _

Hitoka felt her entire body heat up at the praise. “It’s not a big deal,” she typed carefully. “I like making chocolate!” She added a cute sticker of a bunny holding a heart-shaped chocolate box and hit send. Shimizu-senpai never used stickers. Hitoka wondered why, sometimes, but she never quite got around to asking.

_ Shimizu Kiyoko is typing...  _

_ Shimizu Kiyoko (*ﾉωﾉ): I don’t know how to make chocolate... _

_ Shimizu Kiyoko (*ﾉωﾉ): Would you be willing to teach me? No pressure either way, of course. _

Hitoka froze, shoe halfway on her foot, and stared at the incoming message.

“Yachi-san? Yachi-san, are you okay? Breathe, Yachi-san!” 

 

Somehow, Hitoka wasn’t entirely sure how, a date and time was decided upon and Shimizu Kiyoko herself was going to come to Hitoka’s apartment and learn how to make chocolates for Valentine’s day, from Hitoka. Hitoka was going to set the entire kitchen on fire from the sheer force of her blush. There would be no survivors.

She set the ingredients and molds out on the countertop, put the saucepans on the stove, and pulled out the apron that she thought would suit Shimizu-senpai the most. Hitoka’s mom was at work, even though it was a Sunday, because of some emergency business thing or other. “Good luck,” she’d said when she left that morning. Hitoka had nodded and tried to think positively instead of going into a familiar and comfortable spiral of anxiety.

The doorbell rang, making her jump. This was it. No turning back now. Hitoka took a deep breath and pulled the door open. 

“Good afternoon, Shimizu-senpai!” Hitoka bowed and motioned for her to come in. Shimizu-senpai was wearing a simple striped sweater and jeans and had her hair pulled back, but she was just as beautiful as always. What must it be like, to look so cool and calm and collected without even trying? Hitoka knew now, of course, that underneath her calm exterior Shimizu-senpai was actually really shy and reserved, but it never showed on the surface. Unlike Hitoka, whose emotions were an open book.

“You can call me Kiyoko, I told you,” Shimizu-senpai said, taking off her shoes and sliding on the house slippers Hitoka gave her. 

“Kiyoko-senpai,” Hitoka tried. It felt strange in her mouth, even though Tanaka and Nishinoya called her “Kiyoko-san” all the time. Shimizu-senpai, Hitoka thought, deserved the utmost respect. But she smiled when Hitoka called her Kiyoko, and Shimizu-senpai’s smile made the whole room brighten around them. So Kiyoko-senpai it is, Hitoka decided.

Hitoka pulled out her chocolate-making spreadsheet. “So um, according to everyone's preferences and allergies, this is the best chocolate flavor combination,” she explained, tapping the color-coded squares. “We’re going to do milk chocolate first, then dark chocolate, then white chocolate with dried strawberries for Tsukkishima.” She gestured at the blocks of chocolate piled on the counter with various mix-ins.

Kiyoko-senpai nodded, examining the spreadsheet with interest. “Cinammon and cayenne pepper dark chocolate for Sugawara?” 

Hitoka winced. “Suga-san asked for it specifically. I’m a little afraid I’ll overspice it by accident?”

“You can’t overspice food for Sugawara. Speaking from experience.” Kiyoko offered a tiny, disarming smile. “So what’s the first step?”

Hitoka showed Kiyoko how to break the chocolate into tiny pieces and melt it in a saucepan with sweetened condensed milk. “A lot of people just microwave blocks of milk chocolate, but I think it turns out better if you do it like this.” 

She passed the spatula to Kiyoko, who stared at the chocolate and swirled it with a spatula once. “Wouldn’t it make sense to start with the dark chocolates, then? You wouldn’t have to add things to it.”

Hitoka felt her face heat up. “Um, well. I like milk chocolate more, so I...wanted to...do that first...because we can snack on the leftovers later...” she mumbled. “That’s why we’re melting more chocolate than we need.”

“Smart.” Kiyoko stirred the chocolate, now bubbling gently. “I prefer dark chocolate, but milk chocolate is good, too.”

They stirred the chocolate in silence for a few minutes. Kiyoko was standing so close to Hitoka, Hitoka could smell the flowery shampoo Kiyoko used. That was probably creepy. Hitoka stepped back.

“This is the first time I’ve cooked something without anything going really wrong. I set some noodles on fire, one time,” Kiyoko said. 

“H...how?” 

“I didn’t realize you needed to boil them in water.” Kiyoko looked up at Hitoka and smiled that tiny smile again. “My mom’s away on business trips a lot of the time, and my dad doesn’t really cook. I can follow the directions on cup noodles, but that’s about it.” 

Kiyoko-senpai was going to college soon, Hitoka remembered. In a little more than a month, she would go off on her own somewhere far away, and make new friends, and maybe manage a different volleyball team if she wanted to do that, and Hitoka would stay behind. Hitoka didn’t want to think about that.

“My mom made chocolate for a boyfriend when I was in middle school,” Hitoka said quickly, ignoring the voice in her head. “She showed me how she did it so I could ‘win the heart of any boy I confessed to.” She ran a finger around the edge of chrome stovetop. The admission that Hitoka was never going to confess to a boy was still too private to share, even with Kiyoko-senpai. 

The chocolate and the condensed milk were melting together. Hitoka dipped a spoon into the mixture and held it up for Kiyoko to taste. “Try this, please. Is it sweet enough?”

Kiyoko took the spoon from Hitoka’s hands, and was it Hitoka’s imagination or did the older girl hesitate a little before letting Hitoka go? Kiyoko licked the spoon thoughtfully, contemplating like a food critic at a fancy restaurant. “I think it’s good,” she said. 

Hitoka, looking at Kiyoko’s mouth, felt like she was being slowly microwaved from the inside out. This was bad. This was very bad. She was doing  _ so well _ at convincing herself the Kiyoko-senpai related feelings were just regular old upperclassman hero-worship, she let herself get into a situation where Kiyoko-senpai stood very close to her in a tiny kitchen and licked chocolate off spoons. Hitoka did this to herself, and now she had to suffer for it. Tanaka and Nishinoya would kill to be in this situation, she thought dimly.

“Hitoka-chan? Are you okay?”

“Fine! Yes! I’m great!” Hitoka shoved the second tasting spoon in her mouth in case she said anything more incriminating. The chocolate was, Hitoka decided, the right level of sweet.

They poured the melted chocolate into molds and added toppings without any further incident. Hitoka scribbled the names of which chocolate was going to who on pieces of tape and stuck them to the molds, then put the molds in the fridge. “The chocolates need about twenty minutes to harden, but we can leave them in there as long as we want,” she explained. 

Kiyoko peered at the pink plastic tray, flecked with stray drops of milk chocolate on the sides. “That was easier than I thought it would be,” Kiyoko said. 

“Making chocolate is pretty easy! That’s why I like doing it.” Hitoka grinned. “I usually just make them for myself and my mom, though. Except last year, I made some for a high school boy tutoring me in math. He was nice.”

Hitoka unwrapped a bar of dark chocolate over the empty saucepan and began breaking it into pieces when she felt Kiyoko’s eyes on her. “Oh, I’m sorry! Did you want to do this?” 

Kiyoko shook her head. She opened her mouth like she was about to say something and then frowned. “Never mind.”

They made dark chocolate with salt and caramel for Ennoshita, chopped almonds for Yamaguchi, and spices for Sugawara. The spices Hitoka hesitated over.

“I just don’t want it to be too spicy to be chocolate-y, I know Sugawara-san  _ said  _ he wanted it to be spicy but I’m not sure how—” Kiyoko took the measuring spoons out of her hands and dropped a pinch of cinammon and a pinch of cayenne into the mold, swirling the mixture a few times. 

“We can’t even taste that to check, what if it’s too much, or worse, what if it’s not enough?”

“Sugawara will love it,” Kiyoko said, in a tone that brooked no argument. “The whole team is over the moon about getting homemade valentine’s day chocolate from a girl, obligation or not.”

“They all worked so hard this year! They deserve nice chocolates,” Hitoka exclaimed. She still thought of how they all welcomed her to the team when she officially signed up to manage the boy’s volleyball team. They were rowdy, yes, but all of them were so kind and fun. Kiyoko was right. Hitoka didn’t realize how much she’d needed to do this until she was already there.

“The boy tutoring me last year thought I was confessing, because I made it myself.” Hitoka laughed sheepishly. “It was pretty awkward.” She took a deep breath and turned off the heat, pulling the saucepan off the burner. “I don’t want to confess to boys.”

“Oh,” said Kiyoko, voice barely above a whisper.

“Yeah.” The kitchen suddenly seemed quieter, like all of the background sounds hushed at once at the enormity of her confession. She needed to change the subject, now.

Hitoka put the last block of chocolate, white for Tsukishima, on a clean cutting board. “You can chop this while I do the strawberries.” 

Tsukishima had smiled stiffly and said he didn’t have a preference when Hitoka asked, but Yamaguchi interrupted to tell her that Tsukishima’s favorite food was strawberry shortcake so if she could make white chocolate with strawberries in it that would go over well. The look Tsukishima gave him after that was an incredible combination of mortified, betrayed and mutinous.

Kiyoko picked up the knife. “Hitoka-chan...”

“I don’t—,” Hitoka’s voice came out too high and hysterical, and she tried again, “I don’t really want to talk about it, Kiyoko-senpai.”

Kiyoko peered at Hitoka over her glasses. Her face was a mix of skeptical and concerned that reminded Hitoka, horrifyingly, of her mother. “I just wanted to say. I know how you feel. About boys.” She cut the chocolate, not very evenly, but slowly and carefully. Like she hadn’t just flipped everything Hitoka knew upside down.

Hitoka was planning to let her crush pass quietly. Kiyoko-senpai would graduate, Hitoka would see her once a year or so during vacations and get over any lingering feelings with time. But maybe... Hitoka watched Kiyoko work, sneaking glances while her hand cut the dried strawberries on autopilot. A few strands of her silky black hair had escaped Kiyoko’s ponytail holder and fell into her face, and Kiyoko pushed them back behind her ear absentmindedly in a move that seemed elegant and calculated. She looked up at Hitoka watching her, and the tips of her ears turned pink.

Maybe Hitoka didn’t need to get over it.

They put the last of the chocolate in the fridge and cleaned up the small kitchen in silence, if apologizing too much whenever they bumped into each other counted as silence. They didn’t talk about anything, at least, until Hitoka had piled all the leftover chocolate bits onto a spare plate and put the plate and two mugs of tea in the living room.

“You don’t have to stay, I’m sure you have other things you’d rather be doing—”

“No,” Kiyoko interrupted her. She blushed a little when Hitoka made eye contact. “I um, wasn’t sure how long this was going to take, so I cleared my schedule for the afternoon. And...” Kiyoko blushed harder. “I like spending time with you.”

“Oh.” Hitoka stared at the floor. “Me too. I mean, I like spending time with you, too.”

They sat down on the couch slightly apart from each other. Hitoka studied the steam curling out of her mug and carefully avoided Kiyoko’s eyes. 

Kiyoko-senpai was graduating in a month and a half, Hitoka knew, but she looked so peaceful, sipping her tea with a slight smile, knees pulled up on the couch and leaning back against a fluffy pink throw pillow that matched her socks. Kiyoko-senpai looked like a picture in a magazine, like a painting, like something unreal and ethereal drifting down within reach of Hitoka for just enough to change Hitoka’s life.

I want to be closer, Hitoka thought. She could hear Hinata’s voice in her head telling her to be brave.

She put her mug on the coffee table with a thunk. “Kiyoko-senpai,” she said, looking at her, feeling like she was about to dive off a very high cliff into the ocean. “I like you.”

Kiyoko went still. “You do?” 

Hitoka didn’t know how to interpret the expression on Kiyoko’s face, and everything she had been feeling all day bubbled up inside her and spilled out. “How could I not? You’re smart and caring and dedicated and  _ beautiful, _ Kiyoko-senpai, and you listen to me and you work so hard all the time and I know you’re graduating soon but I needed to say it.” Kiyoko still wasn’t moving. “Um. Sorry.” Should Hitoka bow? She thought maybe she should be bowing. “You don’t have to accept my feelings, but I wanted you to know. Because you’re really great, and today was really great, and um, um—” Hitoka probably would have kept talking except Kiyoko chose that moment to lean in and press her lips to Hitoka’s. 

Kiyoko kissed like she did everything else, gently but firmly. “I like you too, Hitoka-chan.”

“Oh,” Hitoka said. “That. That’s good, then.”

Kiyoko beamed. Hitoka wasn’t sure she’d ever seen Kiyoko smile like that before, so widely and so happily.

**Author's Note:**

> talk to me on [tumblr](http://cubistemoji.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](http://twitter.com/mashazart/)  
> 


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